A Kiss Can Make All The Difference
by Renyard Al Fiona
Summary: A kiss can make you realize the truth, make you look into your heart and see who lies within it, can make you realize where you've been and where you want to go. From the end of the second book.


BURNT OKONAMIYAKI PRODUCTIONS

_Fanfiction... grilled to perfection!_

Presents a Renyard fanfic

In the world of Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2

A Kiss Makes All The Difference

Disclaimer: Rumiko built the kitchen, I'm just whipping up the ramen. Ranma 1/2 is the property of Shogakugan and Viz Entertainment, and I don't mean to challenge copyright.

This story uses the manga continuity because I happen to like it. Ranma 1/2 manga: if it's not in here, it probably doesn't exist. On with the show...

*****

Ranma curled himself into a ball. They didn't understand. NONE of them understood what it was like - how... POWERLESS he felt. On the ice, unable to move, and Mikado just... just... "Laughingstock of the whole town. Nobody cares how I feel, just..."

He felt a swat on his head, and heard a snort. 

"Your back's wide open. You're completely off guard." Akane shook her head and set down the first aid kit. "How long do you plan to pout? And you call yourself a man?"

Ranma turned away, curling even further inward. He did not need to deal with... her... right now. "If you think it's so funny, go ahead and laugh."

"Ha ha ha," Akane said, and rolled her eyes.

Ranma whirled to face her, snarling. "What's so funny!?"

"Was that really your first kiss?" Akane asked. 

Ranma blinked, closed his eyes and looked away. Akane could almost feel his emotions simmering, and the intensity of his gaze. She managed to open the first aid kit before Ranma spoke. "What does it matter, anyway?" he said.

Akane clicked her tongue. He could be so _stupid_ sometimes. "Oh, foo - It doesn't make any difference at all." She took out the gauze and scissors, snipped off a bandage, and pressed it onto one of Ranma's raw, abraded wounds.

Ranma winced. The Dance of Death and his own ice-fueled pratfalls hurt like hell, and it still stung. That Akane's ministrations didn't hurt his scraped, swelling and exposed flesh told him that Akane was very good at first aid or taking special care. Probably both. 

"But really," she said to him, "to let yourself get kissed so easily! You haven't trained enough." She paused to press a bandage over the bridge of his nose. "You talk a good match, but you leave yourself open a lot."

Ranma glared. He practiced every day, and the last time he had seen Akane practice was a week ago.

He pushed Akane on the shoulder and swept his arm under her in one swift, martial motion over her shout. He leaned over her face. "Who are you to talk?"

Akane realized that his face was barely an inch away at the same time he did. His face, wounded from his fight, a fight that started for her honor - stray strands of hair dipping over his eyes, fully dilated eyes crackling with a warrior's chi aura. 

Akane realized a second later that Ranma had exploded from his crouch, landing a fair distance away from her, and then she realized that she could feel her heart was throbbing, only just slowly enough for it not to be painful. "D-don't get the wrong idea," Ranma said, waving his arms. "It's not like I was gonna kiss you. Or anything."

Akane was breathing through her mouth. She blinked. And stopped. And turned away saying the first thing that came to her mind, which happened to be "I know." And then, almost unconsciously, said "You wouldn't have the _guts_ to do that anyway."

Ranma reared up, twisting his face into a grimace. "Keep talking like THAT and I MIGHT!"

"OH YEAH?! Go ahead and TRY IT!"

Oh my god, I just said that, didn't I?

They stood and stared at each other in silence, Akane's nostrils flaring. Ranma's eyes started to water. "O...okay!" he said, starting to wonder what the hell he was doing. "But close your eyes!"

Akane's glare deepened, and then she shut her eyes so tightly that her entire face flexed towards her nose, her burning cheeks pressing into her eyelashes.

Ranma moved in and stayed there, transfixed, his shoulders nearly touching his ears, a thin layer of sweat on his head.

It was a long time before he spoke.

"I guess..." Akane opened one eye to glare at him. "This is something..." Ranma put his finger to his lips. "you have to do... with someone you like."

Akane's eyes snapped fully open. She could feel spit drying on her teeth, through barely parted lips. "I... See." She flipped her head aside, with a sharp and painful smile. "So of _course_ you can't do it with _me!_"

"THAT'S NOT WHAT I _MEANT!_" Ranma snarled. 

Akane's turned back to him. Ranma realized he had rolled up his fists, and his fingertips were pressing deep within his palm. He opened his hands and stared back at Akane. She was clearly confused. Maybe she was even more confused than Ranma knew that he was. And she was beautiful. 

He began to grasp that this wasn't the first time he had thought so. And how often he thought so.

Ranma flopped over, gazing at Akane from under the rim of his eyelids. "If... if you don't mind," he said, licking his lips, "then I don't."

Akane made a small, almost inaudible noise, and didn't close her mouth after making it. She could feel her cheeks crinkling, the flow of blood through capillaries and the chill of evaporating sweat across her body. 

The two sat in the dojo, legs folded under them, each one staring into their own lap. Then they moved in, closed their eyes, and kissed.

Akane closed her lips on Ranma's mouth, and pressed. Ranma shuddered and leaned even further in, wrapping his arms around Akane's waist. Human skin was so warm - human touch, the pressure of flesh, so warm. Akane placed her hands on Ranma's chest, limp against her, leaning forward. 

Ranma had vague Chi-sense, but the power that Akane was passing to her was almost overwhelming, flooding his sense like an incandescent flare. Ranma did the only think he could think of: pass the power back to her, leaning back in.

Akane felt his tongue against his upper lip - almost like silk brushing against her, and opened her mouth, touching the tip of his tongue with hers. She felt like she should be doing something more, but she felt so drained... she crumpled into him. She felt water on her cheeks. She couldn't tell if she was crying or if Ranma was.

They pulled apart. It was Ranma.

"S... second one on me. This time, it meant something." Akane felt miserable.

Ranma wiped his eyes. Damn it. He wasn't supposed to do that. "Th... thanks." He shook, and took some time to get himself under control. "Akane, promise me something."

"What?" she asked, in a diminutive voice utterly unlike her usual bombast and bluster. Ranma's, when she thought about it, was as weak.

"Make sure... that... we mop the floor with Mikado's right arm and keep the other as a trophy." Ranma tried to laugh, but a feeble sigh pushed through his throat.

Akane let her hand drop onto Ranma's shoulder. "Way, WAY ahead of you." She smiled, and picked herself up. She turned, then considered, and held out her hand for Ranma. 

He took it and hoisted himself up, rubbing her palm and scratching the back of his head with his other hand. "Um... g'night," he said.

"Night," she replied. She and Ranma exited through different doors: Akane turned off the light.

When she had gone past the living room and the rest of the Tendo clan, and was out of earshot, Nabiki turned to Kasumi, eyebrows stretching into her hairline. "Okay, sister dear, give. Why did you take me away before they got to the good stuff?"

"To make sure that they keep getting along well," said Kasumi with an almost holy smile.

*****

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This will continue. This story is a divergence, starting from the premise that Nabiki DIDN'T abort Ranma and Akane's kiss at the end of Volume Two. But you knew that. We'll see what havoc this wreaks on the timeline next chapter.

I sort of... have a beef with Rumiko Takahashi about the changes she made to the series starting with book 3. Oh, certainly, the series was fun before and fun after that book, but if you look at the transition, you'll see what I mean. 

Compare the end of book 1 or 2 with the end of the later books. The first two books are the romance of Ranma and Akane. Every other book is about Ranma, uber martial artist who Cologne / Shampoo / Happosai / Ryouga has pumped (grunt) up. Forgive me if this sounds pretentious, but I think that the first volume of Ranma 1/2 stands alone perfectly well as not only a hilarious comedy, but a well thought out piece of art on the nature and transformative power of love.

To say that I was disappointed with the later part of the series, and the anime treatment of the first book, is an understatement. I still read and watch the rest of the series, and enjoy it in it's own right, but I will always maintain that Rumiko could have done a MUCH better job if she kept the series a dramedy instead of turning it into a farce.

So this will be my attempt to keep the same sense of deepening romance into the series. Don't worry - Shampoo, Mousse and Ukyou will still have a home here. I'm tweaking the later continuity, not smiting it (Oh, I knew I shouldn't play god!), and besides Shampoo can do great things for the plot... (Cue: ominous lightning, evil cackles, Happousai raiding Victoria's Secret, etc.)

Any flame of my personal viewpoint of the series WILL be deleted. All of you. It's just a cartoon, and we can discuss the critical aspects of it somewhere else - my e-mail address is there for a reason. Focus on the story itself. When you review, please tell me what images were effective or fell flat, instead of a "It SUX" or "It ROX" sort of review.


End file.
